Professor Vili Lehdonvirta is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, a Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute of Data Science, and Hugh Price Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He is an economic sociologist researching the design and socioeconomic impacts of digital marketplaces and platforms, using conventional social research methods and novel data science approaches. He has a PhD in Economic Sociology from Turku School of Economics (2009) and an MSc in Information Networks from Helsinki University of Technology (2005). Previously he worked at London School of Economics, University of Tokyo, and Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. Before his academic career, he worked as a game programmer. He has advised companies, startups, and policy makers in the United States, Europe, and Japan, including Rovio, Warner Brothers, and the World Bank. His book Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis is published by MIT Press and translated to Chinese by China Renmin University Press. (LinkedIn, Google Scholar)

See also:
● My faculty page — at the Oxford Internet Institute
● My blog posts — collated from various sites
● Policy & Internet — an academic journal on ICTs' public policy implications that I edit
● Amimaru — a company I co-founded that provides internationalization services to the Japanese manga industry
● TASO 131 — a game I created as a hobby project in the 1990s

Online Labour Markets Research Theme

More work is being bought and sold via websites and apps like Upwork, Mechanical Turk, and Uber. These online labour platforms offer an alternative to established ways of hiring a person or finding work. While national labour markets stagnate, transnational online labour markets based on digital platforms are growing rapidly. The rules or institutional frameworks of these markets are crafted by private technology firms rather than public regulators. I study how these new private policy makers change the nature of employment, entrepreneurship, and the global economy.

I am the Principal Investigator of iLabour, a major ERC-funded research project on the online gig economy. We have created the Online Labour Index, the first economic indicator to measure the online gig economy in real time. I also collaborate with colleagues to study online labour markets' global development impacts.

Virtual Economies Research Theme

Gamers spend hours earning virtual items. Online stores accept digital currencies like Bitcoin. Marketers are caught buying fake Facebook likes. These are examples of virtual economies: systems where artificially scarce digital markers are produced and circulated like goods. I have studied virtual economies since 2004, explaining why people value virtual items, how developers can construct virtual economies to incentivize and entertain, and how unwanted emergent markets can be countered. I have summarized the results in Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis, co-authored with Edward Castronova and published by MIT Press; and in lectures at the Game Developers Conference (videos).

I have also examined virtual economies' socioeconomic implications, including "Chinese gold farmers" who earn a living by harvesting and selling virtual game items, and virtual gender gaps between women's and men's virtual wealth.